Life by chance.

I see this come up a LOT and I've even gone over the subject previously! But I needed to put my words here to explain how I see that life is not only probable - insofar as we have direct evidence of life existing here on Earth. But is, I think, more likely than a good selection of folk would care to accept.

Understanding 'Chance'

Let's start by understanding 'chance'. Think of probability as the likelihood of a particular event happening out of all the possible events.

• Think of probability as how likely something is to happen.
• Imagine rolling a dice and trying to guess the number.

Expressing Probability

• For rolling a 6 on a dice, the chance is 1 out of 6 possible outcomes.
• We can express this as 1/6 or 1:6.
• I prefer the ratio notation, so I'd say the probability is 1:6 for a single dice roll.

In the topic of this post, there are the possible outcomes:

1. life exists
2. life does not exist

Hypothetical

Proteins and RNA

Forgive the following, but I'm going to vastly oversimplify some details about cumulative probability over time. Let us, for the sake of the following hypothetical, contemplate that the chance of life occurring on any given planet is one in four centillion. This is a phenomenally minuscule contemplation. The number representing it is gargantuan (too large to write here) - I use this as a base number as it is derived from the idea of RNA combining in just the right way such that it can cartelize for the purpose of Abiogenesis.

1:{four centillion}

Passage of Time (highly simplified)

Now, let us expand this hypothetical in that: for every year that has passed (in which there are viable places for life to exist), thirty-one million occurrences of the probability event are resolved. That means some 4.1 approximate quadrillion points of information for testing (I'm rounding to simplify).

13,000,000,000

For this hypothetical, this now reduces the probability to a still ridiculous but now more comprehensible one in one quinquagintillion (yes, that's a real number) but importantly the 'size' of the number has dropped from 602 digits to merely 164 digits. Let's continue.

1: {one quinquagintillion}

Potential locations (again, highly simplified)

This insane number must now be modified by the number of locations at which there can be a successful outcome. Our universe is so vast that even the most powerful measurements we have only account for a fraction of what is out there, and that fraction already accounts for billions, of billions of planets.

To simplify this (just to keep the thought experiment going...) let's say there are one hundred billion possible planets - and to say this is a simplification is an understatement, realistically this is closer to the number just in our local area of space, let alone the incredible space beyond it.

100,000,000,000

Well, all those events events over 100b locations (which is easy multiplication, honest!) Leaving one duoquinquagintillion. An even sillier-sounding number, but smaller - now only 153 digits. Which is, sufficed to say, still rather bloody huge odds.

1: {one duoquinquagintillion}

Impossible Odds?

This extraordinarily unlikely probability might seem to argue against my hypothesis (that the probability of life occurring by chance is 1:1) but we still have a whole raft of variables to include to further reduce the working number - I'll save you the brain space and cut to perhaps the most important determining detail I can think of and then refer to the new working probability number.

Every Possible Chemical Interaction:

Assuming that no single interaction of basic chemicals is the sole operator for the primary emergence, indeed, I will allow here that the primary interactions of chemicals that formed viable proteins and then also their further chemical interaction create such a huge gamut of possible actions somewhere in the range of 10 googol possibilities.

10 {googols}

Now we have a working number that may represent at least a 'good' guess range of our new probability-

1: {one sexdecillion}

A Review

I can, with very, very basic maths refine the probability by an incomprehensible magnitude shifting from a variable with 602 digits to just 52 digits. and I have, at every step, vastly underestimated the calculation required, If I had more time I could better determine the scope of each calculation, and likely also find additional factors to further reduce the working number.

Sadly, I am not paid for this, and as this is just a curiosity, I am happy that within a hypothetical, undercalculated contemplation the 'impossibility' becomes vastly more 'possible'.

I am suitably reassured that, given the correct parameters, and the time to properly calculate the probability would only ever shrink closer to 1:1.

But, such things are for smarter people than I to think of.

In Conclusion - Is this useful, or even interesting?

Well, to me yes, by extrapolating the numbers I found that even where there are only 13 million years of potential occurrences the probability of success is significantly higher than 0:1 likely to occur. To me, this suggests that if we were ever to come close to understanding key details we could extrapolate a probability of life.

We'd need to know how many possible 'places' life can occur, and we'd also have to determine the number of events at which life can occur, both of which are likely utterly impossible for any human to ever truly come to know.

A similar train of thought is explored here: www.science20.com - odds life could begin by chance

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Does Human Life Exist?

From Google Plus: "Science Fact; Acording to the Law of Probability!... Do you Think 4.55 Billions years is Enough For Human Kind To Evolved ... Give Data To Support It ... i will use your Model to win the Lottery..."

Here are my thoughts on why this essentially boils down to gamblers fallacy.
But let me put my thoughts down so you can see why I've come to this result.

Let's have a look at how I would build a probability of model of life occurring:

Does Life exist?

1, We have only one set of datum on which to compare our model that being that human life exists.
and so therefore we must declare that the probability of humans existing is extremely likely as we don't have another universe to observe for 14 billion years (and yes your 4.5 billion is wrong, I'll explain why in a moment)

2, We know that the universe exists. This fact can be tested and hopefully be declared as accurate. There are some that would posit that all existence is merely a dream etc, however, regardless of the metaphysical state of reality we can repeatedly observe, measure, test and base accurate predictions on what we know of the reality we have so until reality can be definitively proven not to exist let us take it that reality exists as it is right now.

3, We have through observation come to understand that this reality has existed in a historical sense for at least 14 billion years or so (the fractions are unimportant here) of which I seem to recall that some 13 billion years has had the universe developing planets.

4, It is hypothetically possible that any planet created has a chance of having life created, but we have only one measured instance of this (our own) there have been billions of planets that have existed, even before ours was formed. and even from empirical evidence there are currently billions of planets that exist. This detail is important later.

Can human life exist?

5, Probability suggests that at any given moment, and I mean in time scales smaller than would be sensible to measure, an event has an X chance of occurring. Where X represents a probability chance of a given event occurring. Our event to be measured is the occurrence of life (here represented as L). so we are attempting to find where X:1

I'me leaning on the occurrence of life being one of natural origin such as Abiogensis and I would see that the occurrence likelihood of such an event to be immeasurably small.

Limitation of event parameters: Where it can occur.

6, We know that X can hypothetically only occur on a planet, but we have already come to understand from point 4 there have been/there are billions of planets and so X now has to be multiplied by the number of planets (here represented as P) that ever existed so now we know that probability of life is at least X(P):1

Limitation of event parameters: When it can occur.

7, The scale of time in which the event can occur (lets call this T) is really quite immense. For example count how many 'moments' there are in a given second (rhetorical). The number of 'moments' that have ever come to pass probably surpasses comprehensible numbers in which I can express things.

There have been 14 billion years (and if you subscribe to the theory of multi-verse as I do, possibly hundreds of billions of years) or simply countless nearly infinite 'moments' at which X has had chance to occur.

Now we have that X(PT):1 is our given chance of life occurring

• X is a redundantly small number
• It is multiplied to the power of an extremely large number (P)
• It is then further exponentially multiplied by a number (T) which cannot even be quantified correctly.

I cannot even come to fathom the scale of this probability event but let us in sake of furthering my discussion point state that we arrive at a probability of 1:1,000,000. This suggests that in every million occurrences it is likely that it would happen at least once.

Gamblers Fallacy

Gamblers fallacy helpfully points out that even in something simple as a coin toss (a 1:2 probability event) it is entirely possible that if flipped a million times we may never see a 'heads' result which hypothetically should occur at least half a million times.

However the opposite is also true of Gamblers fallacy it could be that we see in a coin toss a million results of 'heads'. This is the fun thing about probability, the event outcome does not increase, or decrease its likely outcome based on previous event outcomes.

So even in a coin toss where we see one 'heads' and every other outcome is tails this adhere's to the fact that every event occurrence is 1:2

Back to life...

Back to our derived probability of life occurring, a 1:1,000,000 chance (or however large a scale you like to put in) states that at any moment life can start, and those moments have been flying by, probably several quadrillion moments have occurred while I've written this. Maybe more?

Quite frankly the scale of this now starts to confound and confuse me a little, we have a nearly infinite number of event occurrences in time with a nearly infinitely small likelihood of an event occurring.

Conclusion

I think I'll sum all of this long winded crap up by stating that I would see the probability of life as 1:1 or in terms that can be read by people: 100%.

I am happy to report that life does exist. If life did not exist, I'd have a hard time trying to explain all this. To perhaps alleviate this entire post of rhetorical nonsense, let us in stead observe from a simple top-down check.

1. life exists.

Q: Can life exist?
A: Yes.

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Addendum, I tried looking up some things to help express my thoughts, it didn't help. I found this excerpt from a 'probability over time' thread on www.physicsforums.com

"Or, you could define a metadistribution H(x) = w F(x) + (1-w) G(x) where 0 < w < 1 is a monotonic function of time."

I don't even understand what any of that means... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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